


Carry On

by AreteNike



Series: Apocalypsestuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Apocalypsestuck, Gen, a bit bloody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/AreteNike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat's introduction in the Apocalypsestuck AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry On

You’ve been running for so long.

The air smells different here, kind of cleaner, but with its own flavor that you don’t recognize. It’s almost enough to mask the scent of blood. (Or maybe you’ve just gotten used to that.) Either way, it’s a change, and it lets you know you’ve gotten somewhere. You’d been aiming for the coast, but for all you know you’re only heading further inland. It doesn’t really matter, as long as you keep moving.

You’ve already lost track of the lusii you’ve had to kill, the young trolls driven mad by shock and grief, the ones that found safety only to starve. The ones killed before they could escape. Their faces swim through nightmares untamed by sopor. You sleep tucked in half-collapsed closets, under fallen walls, hidden in whatever nook you can find where a lusus’s eyes or the sun’s rays won’t touch. You ditched your grubtop weeks ago; you tried to contact everyone you knew, but none of them responded. You wonder if any of them are alive. You keep a small handheld communication device on you, though, just in case.

The moon lights your way as you climb warily over a half-fallen wall, keeping low and checking for lusii ahead. There. You’ve got a sickle in one hand and the wall beneath the other, keeping you steady as you shimmy sideways to get behind the dirty white goat-like lusus that stands in the remains of some dead troll’s hive, shaking and covered in dark multicolored bloodstains. It swings its head back and forth, vaguely searching for a target; this is the easy kind, the kind that went the slow sort of mad instead of manic.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.

A quiet thud and a puff of dust, you drop from the wall and ditch your crude pack for ease of movement. The lusus twitches but doesn’t turn around. Good. You move forward.

You accidentally kick a rock, and it clatters against the wall. The goat lusus turns, but you’ve already leapt, sickle slicing clean through the side of its neck and spraying dark red blood across the dust. It bleats loudly and falls slowly; you swear, turn, and run back the way you came, grabbing your pack and leaping through a cracked window. You stumble, and then you’re up and running again. You’ve got to get away before the manic ones come crowding in like flies— attracted by the dying cry and the stench of blood— to devour their fallen kin. You hung around too long once; you’re not going to do it again. Not if you want to survive.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you might be the last living troll on Alternia.


End file.
